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The Atlantic Philanthropies

DEVELOPING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY FITNESS UNDER A GRANT FROM THE ATLANTIC PHILANTHROPIES

Claremont McKenna College (CMC) received a grant of $1,300,000 from The Atlantic Philanthropies to study the most effective means of adapting all or part of the National Research Council’s newly developed FITness approach to information technology instruction at a liberal arts college. This novel approach emphasizes the development of information technology fluency, suitable for a lifetime of information technology advances and improvements, rather than a narrow skills-based approach. Claremont McKenna College is one of the first institutions in the nation to attempt to adopt the FITness approach to computer literacy programmatically.

The FITness Concept

The FITness approach to information technology literacy holds the promise of transforming the way in which undergraduate students learn about information technology. It establishes a base level of literacy expected of all students and offers a means of ensuring that all future CMC graduates are fully capable of meeting the demands of the workplace regardless of their undergraduate majors. Finally, it is a means of providing our students with a comprehensive and life-long capacity for coping with information technology changes in the future. FITness at CMC is based on the conception of information technology literacy developed by the Committee on Information Technology Literacy (CITL) of the National Academy of Sciences, and is described in the Committee’s 1999 report, Being Fluent with Information Technology. Traditional approaches to technology instruction in colleges and universities generally take the form of a computer literacy approach that stresses competency in specific applications, such as word processing or the use of spreadsheets. In the world of rapidly changing technology applications, a single computer literacy course familiarizing students with specific current applications of technology cannot serve their long-term needs. A more effective method is needed to provide students with current skills, an ability to adapt to new technologies, and an appreciation for how to use technology. The CITL has developed such an approach. Rejecting the computer literacy concept as a narrow skills-based approach, the Committee developed the broader notion of computer fluency. Students fluent with information technology (what the Committee calls FITness) should be able to know and understand enough about information technology to adapt to new advances and use technology productively, and for their own purposes, over an entire lifetime. As developed by the CITL, FITness involves three interrelated dimensions - an appropriate skill set, conceptual knowledge, and intellectual capabilities. Each of these three dimensions needs to be incorporated into the College’s curriculum to implement fully the FITness approach.

The Planning, Testing, and Implementation Program

A FITness Planning Committee was charged with the responsibility of leading our efforts to plan, test, and assess the utility of the FITness approach to information technology literacy in the context of a liberal arts curriculum.

The Project Director is Dr. Cynthia Humes, a tenured member of the faculty of philosophy and religious studies and the Director of the Teaching Resource Center. As the College’s Associate Dean for Academic Computing, she directs Educational Technology Services.

Consultants: The College endeavored to obtain the services of several members of the National Academy of Sciences CITL team that developed the FITness concept and authored the report that informs our proposal. In March 2002 members of the FITness Planning Committee met with Allen Tucker at Bowdoin College, and in April 2002, they met with Marcia Linn at University of California, Berkeley.

A number of possible outcomes of the project were considered in this planning phase:

course modules to incorporate and test parts of the concepts, and skills in existing courses
development of a new departmental-based course open to majors and using discipline specific projects to cover the skills
development of a new general education information technology literacy course suitable for all students

After considerable investigation and discussion with departments, a Curriculum Subcommittee charged to investigate technology literacy recommended an Across the Curriculum approach to FITness, that privileged the course module approach. The Curriculum Subcommittee’s recommendation received unanimous approval by the Faculty on May 13, 2003. The recommendations were as follows:

Recommendation 1: The subcommittee agrees with the Fitness Committee that a General Education course should not be required, nor should a capstone course in the major be required. Instead, we recommend that the College adopt the methodology recommended by the FIT ness program: an integrated curricular apporach combining technology and curriculum in courses on a case by case basis.

Recommendation 2:The subcommittee recommends that the College should adopt the skills mentioned above as fitness goals, with the understanding that each department will fine tune these goals over the next year and work with ETS to provide appropriate support.